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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900145">Sun-Starved</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsreloaded/pseuds/angelsreloaded'>angelsreloaded</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Universe, F/M, Family Member Death, Helpful Cole (Dragon Age), M/M, Mage Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Multi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:29:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,835</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsreloaded/pseuds/angelsreloaded</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Misadahl Lavellan is alone. He has his friends, a lover (kind of), and the inquisition at his side. So why does he feel alone? Who does he truly trust?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Blackwall/Lavellan (Dragon Age), Male Inquisitor/Iron Bull, The Iron Bull/Male Lavellan (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sun-Starved</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Misadahl Lavellan was alone. Skyhold was a home, his home, a home to hundreds of soldiers, mages, merchants, his closest friends and family. Everyone found a home somewhere in the sprawling stone. But Misadahl felt truly alone in the castle. </p><p>He hated being alone in his bedroom. The room was way too big for just him and he insisted on giving it to a member of the war council, but they refused to have the Inquisitor in anything but the best accommodations. In his room, his thoughts were louder, the pain from the mark sharper when there was no one around. The crackles from his fire were too loud, his bed was too soft, and the constant draft always found a way in no matter how many insulation and warming enchantments he cast. The room wasn’t cold. Misadahl was deprived of warmth.</p><p>When he walked into the tavern, everything would always shift around him. The barmaids would stand up straighter, Cabot stopped using spit to “clean” the glasses, and the soldiers that normally roamed throughout the floors, laughing their heads off and drunk off their asses, would quietly sit down or leave. It wasn’t because they didn’t like him or because he was an elf or a mage. No, it was because he was the Inquisitor, the blessed Herald of Andraste, sent down by the Maker and his bride. They couldn’t be themselves around him. Not really. As Sera always put it, he was “too big”, which was usually followed by snorts of laughter as the elf realized her accidental joke. </p><p>There was the other problem too. There was no one like Misadahl in all of Skyhold. Sure, there were other mages, the ones he rescued from Redcliffe, but they were mostly humans and the elves were basically shems as well. They revered him, practically worshipped the ground he walked on for freeing them from the chantry and offering them protection. He couldn’t talk to them like a normal person because to them, he’s not a normal person but their savior.  </p><p>He could go to the library and convene with Dorian about magic and Tevinter like he was known to do on his leisure time, but Dorian was a…laborious person to deal with on the best of days. Countless arguments about slavery in his homeland amounted to nothing more than priceless books being reduced to ash and a massive headache for the elf. Though he was a mage, he was still a human, a Tevinter human at that, and he would never understand the problems in Lavellan’s world.</p><p>Vivienne rested on the balcony above the main hall whenever she was unoccupied with a noble issue or pouring over a magical tome. A court mage with an illustrious life and many stories to tell could keep Misadahl occupied for hours. But she was who she boisterously claimed herself to be, a court mage willing to do anything for worldly power. Her position nor her conviction never scared Lavellan for some reason. Underneath her gilded, cold exterior lay a woman who wanted the best for her people and fought for a change to come. A change that Vivienne would fight tooth and nail to achieve, a noble goal that warmed her compassionate heart and inspired Misadahl. Though Lavellan considered her a very close friend, it hurt to be around her at times. She reminded him too much of his mother and his heart ached every time she chastised him or placed her hand on his shoulder when he needed it. He missed his mamae so much, but she was worlds away and he was trapped like a bird in his massive cage.</p><p>The rotunda, where Solas spends his time, was always open to Misa. Technically, it was open to everyone since the doors hold no locks, but Solas always welcomed Misadahl into his space with open arms. They could sit and talk about the past, the present, and the future for hours without interruptions for eating, drinking, and sometimes even breathing, as Misadahl found himself rambling more often than not, though Solas didn’t mind. The older elf even encouraged his behavior, gaining a glimmer in his eyes as his hunger to educate enveloped him. But Solas was like the rest of Skyhold though unlike the others, who saw him as a shining beacon of hope, Solas didn’t see Misadahl as the Herald or the Inquisitor, but instead as a child needing to be taught right from wrong. The man was constantly surprised at the younger mages’ knowledge of ancient elvhen, an occurrence that left Misadahl with a sick feeling in his chest. Ignorant. Slow. That’s what talking to Solas made him feel at times. Lavellan confronted him about his condescending tone, and he tried to change, tried to watch how he spoke to his “protégé” but Solas would always return with the same speeches that left him hollow sooner or later.  And he always had a certain mask over his face, though Lavellan couldn’t quite grasp the emotion it showed. Annoyance? Sorrow? Solas had always been an enigma and his constant revelations on eleven splendor grated Misa. It was hard to care about the past at times, when the present and the future was all that remained on Misadahls’ mind. His capacity to fail was…low. He’d seen a world where he failed. It couldn’t come to be.</p><p>Contrary to what many would assume, Sera is actually one of the people closest to his heart. Initially they constantly bickered over each other’s beliefs and practices, with the two being from massively different worlds, but after a while they found common ground. Things going BOOM. Their combined love for laughter and all the fun things in life brought them together quickly and when Misa saw her in the dark future at Redcliffe, he never let her out his sight again. On one expedition to a village in the Hinterlands, they posed as siblings despite the massive differences in appearance between them, with her pale skin and blonde hair and his brown skin and black hair. It felt so natural to both of them despite her acting in no way like his real sister acted back home. She fit him like the arrows in her quiver or the flame he called to his hand. But even her presence didn’t bring the comfort Misa wanted. She noticed it too. He visited her room in the tavern less and less and she was one of the few who understood why. She was one of the few who understood the loneliness.</p><p>The dwarf and the elf had a friendship together but communicating emotions didn’t come easily to either of them. If Misa sat down by the fireside to talk to the man, it would end with them both drunk and naked after a game of wicked grace, and not in the good way. Varric wanted a friend and Misa did the best he could to provide that but Varric felt the same way as the Inquisitor. The dwarf was lonely. His business resided in Kirkwall and his friends had all scattered to the wind, while he was to remain here. To see the inquisition through to the end. And keep that clumsy elf from plummeting off a cliff.</p><p>His jailer when this all began, quickly became a fast friend to him. Cassandra was rough around every edge she possessed but as Misa grew to know her, those sharp parts smoothed to soft stone. Initially, they bonded over their trauma together, both having lost a sibling at a young age, but after a while, their friendship grew fully actualized. They’d have long conversations in her corner of Skyhold or out on the field about their home countries, armor, magic, anything they could get out of their mouths and speak to the other about. At night, when everyone was asleep, they’d sneak out of their tent and discuss their latest romance reads and inquisition gossip. In public, every lewd remark the Iron Bull made would bring a disgusted scoff from Cassandra but in private, when she was just Cassandra and nothing but, she’d blush and giggle like a young chantry sister to her dear friend. She loved to hear of the soft moments between Misa and the Iron Bull, the moments after their bodies collided and they held each other in their arms. Cassandra felt lonely but not the same loneliness as her friend.</p><p>Warden Blackwall and Inquisitor Lavellan weren’t brothers with no shared blood nor were they enemies. Their presence for each other was comforting, two trees bowing to one another. The relationship between them was one of mutual respect, the shield and the shielded. When they first arrived to Skyhold, in those days where they were still making repairs to their new home and the world believed them to all have perished at the hands of Corypheus, he spent his free time in the stables with Blackwall. The tavern was too loud and everywhere else was too quiet. With the sound of blade carving wood and steeds breathing quietly in the background, Lavellan was able to feel at home again. In Blackwall’s chair he sat and worked on his own carving. A private one he refused to explain to anyone, and Blackwall didn’t seem to mind. When the two were together, they didn’t speak, for there was no need too. Blackwall would stand at his table and whittle away at a new carving, his current project being a massive ship on the waves that Misa assumed to be a gift for Josephine. Lavellan always awed at the man’s skill and attention to detail. His own skills with lumber and knife held no candle to what Blackwall could do, even though Lavellan was born a natural crafter, the child of a tailor and a blacksmith. Blackwall tried to teach him, sat the elf down in front of his table and showed him how to etch the most minute detail into the grain, but his slender fingers just couldn’t grip the knife the way he was supposed to. When that proved fruitless, he held his course hand against the inquisitors soft one and guided it. The warmth of the bigger man pressed against Misa’s back, Blackwall’s course hands against his soft ones, his breath lightly misting the point of his ears. The moment was…dizzying for them both. After that “lesson” they remained on opposite sides of the barn for a few days, a taut silence formed between them. Within an expanse of time, the awkwardness melted away, cutting it down to it just being “pent up hormones” after a long time alone. Lavellan doubted that heavily though he didn’t push further.</p><p>Misa and The Iron Bull were a complicated matter. Like Blackwall, the Iron Bull felt like he didn’t fit in, though his presence was much more…foreign than the human warrior’s. That’s what attracted the Inquisitor to him when they first met. Not the horns, the grey skin, the missing eye, or the massive, rippling muscles that flexed and bowed as he swung his axe through a man’s midsection, smoothly cutting him into two separate pieces. What attracted Lavellan to the Iron Bull was that he was different, a man far removed from his home who stuck out like a sore thumb. He reminded Misa of himself and his presence in the Inquisition, a jutting, sharp edge that brought attention to itself no matter how hard he tried not to. The night the qunari first bedded his “boss”, both came away gasping for air. Bull had found his match in a small, feeble elf he could lift with nothing but a pinky, but who could also melt his insides with a thought in more ways than one. Misa wanted more, truly wanted Bull to be more than a decadent treat to enjoy when the sun went down (and many times while the sun still rested high in the sky) but Bull didn’t budge. Outside of wherever they…coalesced, Bull remained indifferent to his advances, always finding a “clever” way to dodge his declarations. In the field, he’d stare at him as if he were a delectable meal being served in the great hall on Wintersend, a hunger in his eyes for the mages flesh on his tongue, until the urge grew too strong, and they found a secluded place to collide. Afterwards, he’d take care of his boss, cleaning his body with steaming cloths and holding him close to his chest through the night. The skinny elf always looked so cold everywhere they ventured and if he could offer him a few moments of comfort and respite, he would. But the Iron Bull couldn’t offer him any more than his warm body. Countless times, Bull had to catch himself from whispering sweet nothings into his boys – no – his bosses’ ear as he slept on his side. Promises of taking him away from all this when this is over, giving the Herald of Andraste what he truly wanted more than all. But he couldn’t give it to him. He had to protect Misa. From Corypheus, dragons, rogue templars, crazed mages, noble assassins, and who knows what else. And he also had to protect him from the Qun. Those soft lips didn’t deserve to be sewn and bound.</p><p>Though he wouldn’t tell anyone, Cole knew he was Misadahl’s true, sole confidant. Misadahl tried to convey his complex emotions to his friends but they just couldn’t get it and Cole…well Cole was different. He saw the hurt deep down, the hurt that Lavellan couldn’t untangle, the hurt that made him feel guilty for the way he felt.</p><p>“They have my ears but they’re so different from me. So many different eyes, all looking at me. Sadness. Pity. Displeasure. Longing. Stop looking at me, stop looking!” Cole whispered through gritted teeth. He held his head in his hands as he laid on the floor of the Herald’s Rest’ attic. </p><p>“Your thoughts are very loud when you’re upset, Misadahl.”</p><p>Misa sat on the wooden floor beside him and tried to look into  Cole’s piercing blue eyes. </p><p>“Do my thoughts hurt you Cole?”</p><p>“You’re worried about me. You don’t want to hurt me, and you don’t want to hurt anyone else. Is that why you don’t tell them of the void in your chest? Why you keep the hurt there instead of your mouth, pushing it into the air. You like to speak. I can help you tell them about the hurt.”</p><p>Misa placed his hand on the boy’s forehead and pushed his mangy blonde hair out of his eyes. He wondered how the boy was able to fight so effectively when his eyes were always hidden behind the curtain of yellow. </p><p>“You don’t want them to know. They can’t help. They don’t know how I feel. They’re so different. They’re not like me.” Cole looked into his friend’s eyes and they brimmed with ache. “I’m supposed to help, but I can’t? Why can’t I help you Misadahl?</p><p>The Inquisitors eyes welled with tears at that last question. How could he help? Cole was a spirit of the fade given form whose purpose in the world was to help people. But he couldn’t help Lavellan. Not in the way he needed it. </p><p>“It’s not a pain that’s easily fixed, Cole. I know you want to help but some pains…they stay. It's something you have to deal with even if you wish so hard to change it with words or actions.”</p><p>Cole stared up at Misa for what felt like a lifetime before pulling his head off the ground and putting himself at eye level with Misadahl. He grabbed the elf’s hand and held it up to his cheek, relaxing into his touch.</p><p>“I see. Some hurts...they can’t be fixed with words or actions. I can’t help you by speaking, can I?”</p><p>“No, you cannot Cole.” Lavellan responded with a heavy sigh, taking his hand back and placing it at his side.</p><p>“I can’t help you, but you want me by your side because I’m your only friend in the world. I understand now.”</p><p>Lavellan laughed a strong, hearty laugh at that. A laugh he hadn’t heard come from him in days.</p><p>“I knew that would make you smile.”</p><p>Cole let go of Misadahl’s gaze and turned over to his back, resting his head on his friend’s lap. Without thought, Misa began to stroke the spirits hair and leaned his head back against the wall, taking his time to revel in the small moment.</p><p>“Warm and yellow. Saccharine sweet. Like the sun. The taste of purple berries on your tongue as you braid your sister’s hair between your fingers. The flowers smelled like the sun, filling you up with its light, almost enough to float. You felt content. The feelings smaller now but you feel it again. I remind you of her. I did help.” </p><p>A tear fell from Misa’s face. </p><p>“Yes, Cole. You did.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So I wanted to do a character study on my Lavellan relationships with the Inner Circle as its not really shown that well in game (well the main game at least). TBH I also may be projecting a lil but its ok its my character :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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